[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 44 - “CEREMONY OF CELESTIAL FATE”



Apropos for a Gemini story, I’m of two minds on this one.

One part of me admires what this episode’s trying to do. The shift from Maniacal Doppelganger to something more probing and revealing about Yuuki’s buried resentments and desires, that’s a more interesting route to take. Forcing Yuuki to deal with her own propensity for darkness, and come out the other side a more healed and reflective person, that’s a solid concept.

The other part of me thinks that this episode never really addressed any of that, instead giving us a story less about anything from within Yuuki, and more about Gen’s newly-revealed tendency to forget key details of his past with his oldest friend, including defining moments that would normally be burned in someone’s memory, casting a tragic light on how little Yuuki actually meant to Gen.

This one pretty much entirely didn’t work for me, and not for the expected distaste for Double Yuuki. While I didn’t love Yuuki’s maddened and distraught performance, the whole episode was geared towards such a constant level of psychological horror that it fit the surroundings enough to be not distracting, if not entertaining or moving in its own right. No, what didn’t work for me was how little agency Yuuki had in any phase of this story, mostly being criticized and betrayed by her friends, and then eventually pep-talked enough by Gen to paralyze and regress Gemini. While Yuuki does at least acknowledge Gemini’s place within her psychology, Yuuki herself never really defeats or confronts Gemini; instead, she just, like, stops feeling bad about herself – and her justifiable anger over Gen completely forgetting the defining moments of their childhood together, this is still actively infuriating as a viewer, Ryuusei 100% nailed Gen’s lack of follow-through back when they first met – until Fourze can detonate her. The key speech in this one is just Gen apologizing to Yuuki for being a bad friend! That isn’t even about Yuuki! It’s about Gen!

This whole episode ends up being about Gen, and while that’s arguably more appealing for a lot of reasons, it’s like: what are we even doing here? What have we learned about Yuuki in the present day that changes anything? She’s not responsible for anything that happens in this story, she doesn’t actually confront her darker side in any way that matters, and she doesn’t really change as the result of anything that happens here. Her beef with Gen starts in the middle of 43, and gets resolved in 44, but it’s all new information that only exists within these two episodes. In a story that hinges its emotional stakes on the two halves of Yuuki’s mind, the climax is about Gen avowing his friendship to a girl after he basically blanked on the most important moment of their friendship; which, again, not a thing Yuuki did! It’s a Gen story!

Man, of all the reasons I thought I wouldn’t like this story, They Didn’t Make It Enough About Yuuki was not where I thought I’d come down on it. Good to see Fourze can still surprise me this far into its run?